Ocean part is almost done

It didn't take long to almost complete ocean part. I smeared the mid section with burnt umber unintentionally, which I need to come back and overpaint after it half-dried. Since it was already covered by approximate values, I didn't have to put  much paint to get desired texture of water surface. I just scumbled over.
However, the front table rock's texture is still not what I want. I'll come back later again after finishing up the trees next. It's getting closer to finish this but it's quite obvious I can't finish this by the end of this month. But, so be it.

Before painting the North Edge above, I drove up to the summit of Snoqualmie in the morning and snowshoed up to Hyak Lake again.  The last third was tougher since nobody walked up to the lake before me this morning. About a foot or more new snow covered the trail. I lost it but simply followed the general direction toward the lake. There was a little sun break when I arrived at the lake as in the photo but very short window. It started snowing after that moment. I enhanced contrast of the photo with GIMP to be able to show my trail. I want to paint the lake from one of photos I took from last a couple of visits. It would be monotone but it's worth trying. I haven't painted a snowscape quite a while.

Gradually defining shapes

From far to near, or from top toward bottom, I'm refining the shapes and values, and also colors. Just like any other animal paintings, I haven't decided the colors&values of front pasture at this stage. The yellow part I put on for test is a little too light. I need to make it darker to keep focal points on the cows.

Let's not rush to the result

I know today is already Jan 22 and only a week before my Canadian vacation. I obviously want to finish this before I take off. But.... rushing to the result for the trees doesn't do anything good. I can see the left side is almost done but for the right side I didn't make darker part dark enough, so loosing the depth. I'm not good enough to make a better painting by rushing. I have to slow down.
I'll leave this area for now and will work on water next.

Push and pull, back and forth...

I started pushing the greens back by making the colors darker&cooler but I did too much, and working on pulling some back.
I think I need to keep doing this a couple of more times before getting the final values and temperatures. The best part of these is every time I add colors over the top, it would add depth and volume to the forest. I also need to put more colors to the sky and curve in the edge of threes, as well as some sky holes.

More context around them

I gave more context around them before refining the body shapes. The pasture needs to be lighter eventually. But at this stage, it's good enough to move on. I used 1+1/2inch brush all over.

Getting into the detail of front table rock shapes

Again, started feeling getting into too much detail of the front table rock shapes. I'll go back to the green and make them a little darker as I thought before.

Getting into too much detail

I started feeling I got into too much detail of the patterns on the right rock. As long as I got horizontal stripes, it's good enough for now and I need to move on to the front bottom rock, which has the most interesting patterns on it. I also want to make the trees a little darker to push them back. They're leaning forward now.

Just pushing values a little bit...

I just pushed values for darkest dark and put lightest values in. But I already started liking this painting. It's simple, nothing complicated. I'll work a little on the pasture next.

Depth of dreen was added

Roughly put some value variations to the green. Now I can see the values of rocks relative to the greens. Also I'm still tweaking the rock shapes. I'll be working on the right rock on the edge probably a while.

Cows are positioned

I covered most of canvas with a 1" brush except white part of bodies, which I also need to separate between lighter and darker soon. I could have blown up the cows a little bit to make them closer, especially the main one, #1056 on the tags (that's why the title would be "1056 et al."). But I wanted to keep the distance from viewers to make them as a group separated from human viewers. That's why I kept the wire fence in-between.

Not moving fast

Not much progress lately other than defining the shapes around the cave, which would become one of focal points. But I started thinking I should put more colors&values for trees now before working on more details of rocks. Currently the area is just spaced out. So I started putting tree trunks with the lightest color. Now I can see the front rocks need to be much lighter compared to the tree trunks.

By the way, I walked up the snowshoe trail this morning and finally got to Hyak Lake, which is the destination of the trail. I met a tall woman on the trail who got up earlier but couldn't find the last stretch of the trail and came down. She just needed to walk up 100ft or less along the power-line (see the photo on 1/1) after reaching the inter-summit crossover run. I luckily found it by following the creek that the trail is running along. So I was the first person to got there today. As in the photo, the lake was completely covered by snow. I walked around on th e trail. I might paint from the photo I took. It was really mono-tone though.
I might go there again before my Canadian vacation at the end of the month to keep my resolution!

New Year Resolution

You probably feel this is nothing to do with art. You're right in general sense. But...
Today I drove up to Snoqualmie Pass for snowshoeing. This was my third snowshoe experience at the summit for last 8 days(12/25, 12/29, then today 1/1), or entire life. Every time the course is slightly different. It's in-between Summit Central and East. There is a snowshoe trail but I somehow failed to get on it. This is a part my new year resolution: do more exercise, and a part preparation for Canadian ski/snowshoe vacation at the end of Jan. I might paint there if weather is too good for those main activities. At the end of last year, I came to a conclusion that all sorts of my health issues for last 5-6 years have origin in 2005-2007 when I went to school and when my life style has changed completely mainly due to time constraint.
It's definitely affecting to my art making too. Or to everything. I want to get my healthy life style back. I'm going have more exercise and change diet. That's my new year resolution.